The Kink Corner with Kal Cobalt: Sadism

by Kal Cobalt

Is making someone hurt an act of cruelty or an act of love? If you said “either one, and sometimes both,” you get a gold star (and I’ll see you at the dungeon). If you didn’t, read on: Here come five points that might help explain why beating the shit out of someone can be the nicest thing anyone ever did.

Sadism

1. Sadism may be mean, but it isn’t abuse. As with all BDSM activities, consensuality is key. Providing pain is always agreed upon, and sometimes is even a service provided to a masochistic partner. There’s often more communication between a sadist and their partner than most vanilla partners engage in before sex!

2. There are two types of sadism commonly acknowledged. Some sadists enjoy providing pain to masochists—i.e., people who receive pleasure from the pain itself. Other sadists enjoy providing pain to people who don’t enjoy the pain, but enjoy enduring pain as a service to the sadist. While the latter type is often referred to as a “true” sadist, neither way is more “true” than the other; they’re simply different. Whether one enjoys seeing a masochistic partner delight in pain or prefers a partner who struggles to accept the pain as a gift to the sadist, both contexts are sadistic, and both are valid.

3. “Borrowed” techniques have new contexts. A BDSM scene employing techniques taken from “real-world” schoolboy punishments, police interrogations, violent kidnappings, or even water boarding is often hard to understand from the outside. However, effective techniques exist outside of moral contexts and can be used accordingly. To get meta for a moment and recontextualize this point about recontextualization: For a person who hates chocolate, being told to eat a large slice of chocolate cake is torment. For a person who enjoys it, being told to eat a large slice of chocolate cake made just the way they like it is an outrageously decadent proposal.

4. Sadism doesn’t have to be all whips and chains. The popular image of the leather-clad, whip-wielding, flogger-flagging, handcuffs-and-chains sadist is admittedly hot, but that’s not all there is. Sadists come in all shapes, sizes, genders, ages, and toolkits to fit. A tiny box filled with clothespins, chopsticks, knitting needles, and ice packs can inflict just as much pain as the most elaborate duffel bag full of $400 floggers. Sadism doesn’t even have to involve any tools at all: pressure points, joint locks, a handful of your partner’s hair, and a few fingernails can provide hours of fun.

5. Your therapist says, “It’s all good!” Sadism still carries a heavy social stigma in non-BDSM circles. However, a small victory in public perception was achieved in 1994, when sadism and its counterpart, masochism, were removed from the listing of psychological illnesses and disorders. Like many other activities, sadism can still become clinically significant when practiced to disruptive excess, but sadists are no longer considered mentally ill simply by virtue of engaging in consensual sadistic practices. It’s a good time to be a kinkster!